Pub Fare Extraordinaire

AT THE TABLE

Mayflower Inn's Taproom Is Well Worth The Damage To The Waistline And The Wallet

November 22, 2007|By ELISSA ALTMAN; Special To The Courant

I tend to steer clear of dining in hotels and inns (unless I'm a guest, and sometimes not even then) for a variety of reasons.

First, I worked for a hotel about a thousand years ago, and I know what goes on in those steely commercial kitchens that not only serve three meals a day in the main dining room and pub room but also through room service.

Second, hotel and inn dining rooms often turn out stodgy, stiff fare that runs the qualitative and creative gamut.

Finally, unless the name embroidered on the towels reads The Savoy or George V, you're more than likely going to be eating industrially pre-prepped grub laden with enough salt to keep you from prying your boots off until the spring thaw.

Which is why, when I do find an inn serving remarkable fare, I rejoice.

So I offer you a secret: Want to pay a short visit to an inn whose nightly board rates are half of your monthly mortgage? Whose spa was named No. 1 a year or so ago by Conde Nast Traveler? Want to know what all the fuss is about?

Do yourself a favor: Grab a few friends and sit, in the case of the Mayflower Inn and Spa, in the darkened, pubby Taproom, where, less inclined to be so worried about your posture or your American Express bill, you'll appreciate just how spectacular their burgers are. And believe me when I say this: They are.

My last luncheon trip to the Mayflower Inn was three years ago; my dining partner and I sat on the inn's magnificent stone patio on a cloudless summer's day, surrounded by a veritable flock of movie types and writers and artists.

Looking around, I realized that not one of my fellow diners was a guest; they looked entirely too comfy and local, like they were privy to a secret along the lines of "Want to know where the best sandwich in the Northwest Corner is? Well - tough. We're not going to tell you."

The Mayflower is more than a bit clubby - as befits its name - and so, even if one is to enjoy what is arguably the finest burger available anywhere in the state, one does so at considerable emotional risk. Unless one squirrels oneself away in the aforementioned dark-paneled Taproom, which - bedecked with 1940s movie posters (originals, I'm assuming) - feels like the inner sanctum of the Harvard Club during the Eisenhower administration, one is bound to feel put off by its icy chill.

I said this to my companions during a recent meal there, round about the time that I noticed that the foot of my water glass was wearing its own sort of cloth diaper, to prevent it from leaving marks on my supposedly casual taproom table.

But the lunch (and dinner - the menu is the same throughout the day, but does change seasonally) served in the Taproom is well worth the attitude, and even the diaper: Roasted butternut squash soup, infused with vanilla essence, which I thought would make it cloyingly sweet, was instead lush, velvety and at once earthy and redolent of maple; smoked chicken Caesar salad was not heavy and gunky, the way it often can be, but delicate and tender, its tang set off by the undertone of woody, sweet smoke; the club sandwich - elevated to magnificent by a perfectly rendered slab of grilled swordfish drizzled with a surprising and pungent Sriracha aioli - was spectacular.

All of this said, when life finds you in the middle of a cold, snow-threatening November day, when the leaves have fallen and the expertly groomed Japanese maples are girding for the onset of winter, sometimes - especially if you're at the Mayflower, and you're able to forget that it's also now a world-class health spa - you just want a plain, old burger.

Stacked on a warm brioche (perhaps they had run out of the usual Kaiser rolls the afternoon I was there), set between fresh bibb lettuce, a hockey puck-size slice of tomato, and drizzled with a red wine shallot aioli and gorgonzola, the Mayflower burger stands roughly 6 or 7 inches high off the plate, competing with the virtual bucket of hand-cut, parmesan-and-rosemary roasted fries that come with it. It is true what they say about "artisanal" meats, and there is no better way to actually taste how great this kind of meat can be than to have it in the form of America's favorite sandwich. The Mayflower Burger, produced from Bridgewater-based Greyledge Farms' Black Angus cattle, is at once sweet and earthy.

A sheer shock, it may actually be too gamey for those who take their food fast, who are not used to meat tasting the way meat should ideally taste. Then, throw your calorie counting out the window for the day, and order the miraculously perfect pumpkin bread pudding.

So, go to the Mayflower, and forget, if you can, the fact that you're sitting at one of America's premiere inns, on a picture-postcard plot so perfect that just being there is stress-inducing; instead, park your Subaru alongside all those Land Rovers, and sidle up to the Taproom. Keep your elbows off the table, leave the diaper on the water glass, and chow down on some of the best pub grub available anywhere.